Media Has Differing Views Of “Innocent Targets,” Depending On Who Is Doing The Shooting

The U.K. Guardian is well know for having a distinctly statist editorial slant, and very much believes that the only problem with government is that there isn’t enough of it.

Controlling people—doing what is “best” for them, whether the people want it or not—is their default answer for every problem, and is part of the reason that the United Kingdom is rapidly devolving into a second-rate nation.

Independence is something that such Orwellian statists deeply resent, and so it is hardly surprising that they were more than happy to tout anti-gun performance art.

It is the feeling of safety, and maybe a little bit the feeling of power. That is what a lot of Americans say they get from gun-owning, which is ironic because if they looked at the statistics they ought to get a feeling of fear. Protecting your family is a fine notion, but a lot of the time it is in fact the family of gun-owners who get shot.

To remind people of this – and to make sure the message doesn’t become bogged down in subtlety – the designer Anthony Burrill, the art director Ewoudt Boonstra and the copywriter Zack McDonald have created Innocent Targets, a new series for gun ranges. But in place of the hoodlums and terrorists that everybody loves blowing apart, the team have used pictures of ordinary people. “Abused women are five times more likely to be killed if their partners own a gun,” the small print beside one target states, its bullseye hovering over the forehead of a young woman baking.

“Ewoudt had the original idea,” Burrill says. “He was just shocked by the level of gun violence, and the way that guns are part of American culture.” Needless to say, the team do not expect many sales to actual gun ranges, so the designs were launched last week as posters, priced at £25 each plus postage, with proceeds going to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “We’re just hoping they’ll go out into the world,” says Burrill, who is best known as the creator of the Work Hard & Be Nice to People posters. “We hope people will buy them and they’ll go on their walls not just as an art work, but maybe something that can provoke more of a discussion.”

Here are two of these so-called “Innocent Targets” created by these emasculated souls to protest civilian gun ownership in the United States.

One of the “Innocent Targets” created as a gun control protest.

The first (above) is a young woman ostensibly getting married. The second (below) is a woman baking. We can only assume that the Guardian’s radical feminists have been muzzled in this instance “for the greater good.”

Another “Innocent Target” showing a woman baking.

It is indeed a horrible thing when innocent people are targeted, which is why we find it odd that the Guardian failed to mention that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security spent up to $2 million buying nearly identical targets to desensitize agents to the prospect of shooting pregnant women, young mothers, and the elderly.

Minnesota-based Law Enforcement Targets, Inc (LET) has been awarded $5.5 million in contracts with the federal government, including $2 million with the Department of Homeland Security.

In light of this fact, it’s no wonder that the American people were outraged last week when it was uncovered that the firm had released a series of gun practice targets featuring a pregnant woman, a child, a young mother and grandparents.

This No More Hesitation series includes seven total targets, each subject armed: Pregnant Woman, seen in front of the backdrop of a nursery, Older Man 1, stands in his home, in front of a bookshelf and Older Man 2, Older Woman, is depicted in a bathrobe in her kitchen. The Young Mother, seen on a playground, is holding a toddler’s hand in one hand, gun in the other.

Then there is Young Girl standing in a driveway with a sack purse slung over her shoulder, and Little Brother, a very little person indeed, is depicted in a backyard with a privacy fence behind him. “Older man” stands in his home, in front of a bookshelf.

LET said that the targets were requested by law enforcement agencies and designed in order to “train police officers for unusually complex situations.”

Apparently, shooting innocent people is just fine if a government agency is the assailant pulling the trigger.

The Department of Homeland security spent millions purchasing targets intentionally designed to desensitize DHS agents to shooting pregnant women, young mothers, and children.

Anyone with working grey matter would be far more outraged that a massive government entity spent millions procuring targets for the specific purpose of training federal officers to shoot pregnant women in their home nurseries, young mothers in front of backyard swing sets, children, and the elderly in their own homes.

But don’t expect the Guardian to express any outrage over concerns that a domestic security apparatus has spent millions on weapons and ammunition, and millions more training to use those weapons against average citizens, with just the fig leaf of an incongruous gun thrust unceremoniously into targets that are otherwise frames of normal daily life.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
https://bearingarms.com/author/bobowens-bearingarms/